At 08:21 AM 12/6/97 -0600, you wrote:
>Just a thought -- For any of you who think the written word is no longer a
>reflection of popular culture, exactly how much time have you spent reading
>the postings on this list???? BIG <G>
>
>Lorry
>
Huh. I'd never considered this. You think this list is part of popular
culture?? I know computers are becoming more and more a normal accoutrement
of the white yuppie US household--but, popular?
Which brings up a thorny point -- and one that's probably completely off
list-topic, but... how are you/y'all defining 'popular'? Because that was
one of the components for my beef about SF being called popular, as in
'loved by the people', the (crowded, huddling) masses. If fewer than 2% of
the population read more than 1 book per year... how can any reading
activity be called 'popular'??? On the other hand, maybe I'm too influenced
by Marxism in my conception of what "the people" is. In the US, the
majority of the population seems to fall in the middle class range. And it
is quite likely that the 2% of readers come primarily from middle class &
upper class.
But.
Fanzines are bought by fen, not the general population.
SF stories no longer appear in serialized form in newspapers or magazines as
at the turn of the century--though I guess they still do appear in Playboy?
(dunno, haven't been keeping up with that one).
Comics, on the other hand, can clearly be called 'popular,' as well as
cartoons--especially those involving superheros. I would argue that
superhero comics belong to the SF category in that they are "science
fantasy," that is, their internal world structure is highly coherent and
cognitive in the Suvinian sense of Western scientific cause-and-effect
logical thinking. Every time SpiderMan climbs a wall, he sticks on it,
unless some logical event makes him fall. On the other hand, even though
the originating novum--SpiderMan fell into a vat of superjuice uhm, ok, so I
don't know the genesis of SpiderMan, but it was some kind of Frankensteinish
birthing event--is often scientific, the 'magical' powers these super-heroes
thereafter possess are fantastical. But getting back to the 'popular' issue:
perhaps comics have such popular appeal partly because there is so little to
read.
The only written form of SF that I can think of that *might* be "popular"
among the 2% of readers are the Trekkie spinoffs, and maybe Arthurian
Romance/Fantasy and some other Fantasy worlds that are sequellized.
So, why call SF--as a genre--'popular'?
Heather
=)
hmaclean@kent.edu
http://www.personal.kent.edu/~hmaclean
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